Road Trip 2006

January 24, 2006 - Hi everyone, thanks for checking on our web site. We've been on the road now for a couple of weeks but I haven't had time to update too much. It's amazing how busy you can be, or maybe that is how lazy you can be. We left Canmore on Jan 7 and headed to Ouray for the Ice festival. This year we both had to climb in a qualifier for the finals so we had to get there a couple days earlier to do this. We both qualified for the climbing on the final day so we were really happy with that. On Saturday we both climbed and had fun. Unfortunately we were both climbing pretty early in the morning so we had to get up early, plus the ice on the start of the route was still pretty weird. Shelley took a long fall on the ice when the piece she had her tools in broke, luckily she was fine. I climbed right after her, and climbed the ice pretty carefully after what happened. I made it to the rock part of the route and did okay. Fell off earlier than I'd hoped I would, but I think I read the route a bit wrong and climbed up instead of heading left. Anyhow, it was fun and we had a really good time. The Canadians did really well again, with Will Gadd coming in first and Rich Marshall coming in third, all in all a good show.

After Ouray the forecast looked a little iffy for Indian Creek so we headed to Las Vegas to climb at Red Rocks. We spent a couple days in Vegas and then headed to California to visit Dad and Sharon and do some climbing in Joshua Tree. It turned out to be really windy in California so we just spent a few days there and we're now back in Vegas. It is sunny and warm and hopefully the wind doesn't kick up so we can have some warm days. Finding a shower in Vegas can be quite an adventure. There is a climbing gym where you can go, but they charge $4 for a shower and it barely has any water pressure. Other than that there is lots to do here. We don't get to go to many movies in Canner so we try and catch up to and see some things we haven't seen. Plus there is a Whole Foods Market just down the road from the campground, it has free wireless, good coffee and great food, so we can be found there alot too.

It looks like we missed our election in Canada yesterday, but they managed to get democracy to work without us being there, that was good to see. I see we have another minority government so I have a feeling we'll get to participate again really soon, hahaha, oh well.

Bear is traveling really well this year. It takes her a day to get into it, but after that she just hangs out. Some of the approaches to the climbs here in Red Rocks give her alot of trouble now, so we are going to experiment with leaving her in the van. She sleeps alot, so I don't think this will be a problem. I want to get a big "Beware of Dog" sign and put it in the window to scare off potential burglars.